Hi all -

I love my new 06 911 C4 but have found the all beige interior a little too...beige. My beige mats were in great condition but I really like the look of dark brown mats. So while I have been waiting for my color samples to come in from Lloyds mats, I thought I would give dying my mats a try. I found a DIY on a lexus forum when I did a google search which used four boxes of Rit Dye to dye the mats. I bought four boxes of dark brown Rit Dye off amazon and followed the instructions. I soaked my beige mats for almost 24 hours and I'm including pictures of the results.

I didn't know exactly what parts of the mat would absorb the dye and which wouldn't but I'm pleasantly surprised with the results. As you can see in the picture, the Porsche logo did not which creates a nice contrast and blends well with the rest of the interior. Also the piping on the edge of the mat did not so it turned out a darker beige.

My mats were slightly stained from years of use and of course the dark brown dye covered that all up. There were a few parts that came out just slightly lighter than the rest but it is hard to tell when the mats are installed.

 

Nice work!

 

This may need to be my next project.

 

I felt the same and replaced the tan mats with 'metro blue' . its a nice contrast to beige with white exterior.

My only concetn would be bleeding on carpets if the mats get wet from your shoes etc. But they came out nice.

 

Yeah on that bleeding thing... does the dye rub off at all? I would like to convert my gray to black.

 

Its been a long time since I used Rit dye for a costume but......

IIRC the directions say to use boiling water when dying and then dip in cold water to 'set the dye'. This works kinda well on porus IE cotton materials. Im assuming you would have a higher chance of bleeding with a man made material like synthetic carpet. Personally I would take a wet old Tshirt and see if if there was some color transfer.

RIT dye can be used to tint various things, like the visor on an X wing helmet from clear to yellow. I almost used it to tint the visor on my Apollo A7L suit in my avatar but went with another method to get a true gold reflective look.

 

I recently used spray carpet die from Detail King on my sand beige carpets which had faded from the sun. It worked beautifully to return everything to like-new, in fact the fading was uneven and I was able to apply the die selectively to blend the faded areas with those that hadn't. The Lloyd's package shelf mat had faded almost to white, and the dye worked great on that also (although I replaced it with a black one along with a set of black floormats).

Detail King sells two types of die, one is in an aerosol can and stays mainly on top of the nap. The one I used is a liquid (comes in a concentrate and you dilute it) which you spray on and gently massage in with a soft brush or towel. They don't recommend it for color change, and definitely I wouldn't use it to go to a completely different color, or a lighter one, but for going from say gray to black, or beige to natural brown...basically going to any darker form of the same color family, it works really well. After the dye job I treated everything with Solar Shield spray to help keep it from fading again.